“I CAME, I saw, I dug.” That was the most popular epitaph for the now-defunct Phoenix Mars lander in an last week. On Monday, NASA said that it had lost contact with the lander, bringing the mission to an end.
Despite attempts to contact it using two orbiting spacecraft, Phoenix has been silent since 2 November. “We’re pretty much convinced that the vehicle is no longer available,” says NASA’s Barry Goldstein.
Phoenix’s end came three weeks earlier than anticipated. The craft’s solar power had been dwindling as the Martian winter approached, and a dust storm late last month accelerated decline by darkening the skies.
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Phoenix is not expected to survive the Martian winter, when temperatures will drop below -150 °C. The solar arrays “will likely crack and fall off the vehicle”, says Goldstein. Still, the team plans to check again in October 2009, when enough sunlight returns to power the lander. “This vehicle has been so superlative in the way it’s been behaving since it landed, nothing would surprise me,” says Goldstein.